Anticheat?

Anyone know if there will be a proper anticheat in this game or will it be like horizon games? Where cheats roam free and nothing will be done about it ?

I prefer that a dev will answer or someone who knows. And feel free to talk about it 2 :blush:

They work on it or idk

This cant be good for the game.

Various factors come into play, such as if an “always online” connection is needed as then any shenanigans can be stamped on by the servers as more will be done there compared to how much is currently “local” on a PC and therefore open to exploit as the necessary files are on the individual PC. Move that elsewhere, along with traffic monitoring, it’s not so easy to hack/mod.

Especially regarding Steam as most cheat mods I’ve found, never downloaded or used, for FH were for Steam versions. And no anticheat system stops modded accounts, which is an obvious one that can be stamped down hard on since there’s a record of who has paid for what, how long the account has been active, etc, so SHOULD be nipped on first run if the will is there.

Full device bans, not just user bans, so absolutely no access to any game on the MS/XBox network for doing such, would also be a strong deterrent, but the will has to be there.

1 Like

Depends but i dont think they find the right people.

The qualifications stuff in the job offer already says “no idea” and other thing is the money. It’s 2023 every kid without “qualifications” but ‘strong’ knowledge of the stuff can do more money with various bug bountys from home with lots of time for other things.

Same for the other side cheat/modder/crackers can do money now through paetron and so on. People donate money to crack games. Money changes everything…

EpicGames bought Kamu (developers of EasyAntiCheat) they added Byfron in late 2022 to the game so the free game is protected by atleast 3 anticheat tools and people (esports) still can buy custom hacks for fortnite. Roblox added byfron and there is already lots of public bypasses.

Motorsport is different game (without millions of players) so it is easier to protect and for lots of kids the simulation is anticheat enough. In the end it depends on the people they have and how fast they react in the cat/mouse thingy :smiley: (they can’t even fix simple bugs after 2 years)
But probably ends in “lets implement/add this and that - we have no idea what we do”.

Biggest problem of the whole thing is it always affects the “real players” most…


Na… It’s a paid games. And it’s forza look at the fancy AI this and AI that (FRR)…
I know already what happens in the “play 5 days earlier phase” here in forum :smiley:
All the new fancy bugs, broken features…

That’s a perfect example of anticheat being held “locally”, it runs on your system and while it communicates with servers the fact it’s “local” leaves it open to bypasses. Like a padlock only stops an honest thief, “local” anticheat only works with those who are not determined to get through no matter what.

And as far as “paid” and “free” goes, it ends up being more important for the AAA priced games because if people think they’re wasting time because of people using exploits, they’re less likely to spend the money. The implementation we’ve seen recently in the likes of FH5 where the game ends up being crippled for the ordinary user as T10/XGS chase tails trying to close the doors and lock things down is obviously not the way forward, ultimately all these monthluy problems add up and turn people elsewhere, and that’s why a true deterrent, one where you can’t use your account, PC, and/or Console on ANYTHING online over the XBox network for using hacks/mods or modded accounts would be a true deterrent compared to now, because the current ideas simply don’t work as we see. That can be done as it is a breach of the T&C of the game and the service so, even from a legal standpoint, they’re in the clear.

You want to stop it, you start coming down hard, pour encourager les autres

FH5 is own thing. They added the Arxan crap for unknown reason (game was cracked on day1).
The store was flooded with “My game doesn’t start” so it only affected legit owners and was no protection. Other thing is the container/ms stuff wich affects more users.

And they still have

Disable ALL background software or applications, including, Antivirus, Firewalls, and any FPS boosting or monitoring software.

on the support page. They “protect” the game and the enduser has to disable every protection. It’s stupid nothing else! Same for the other software they list, useless, most gamers have atleast 1 running (ghub cmon)

Game is 2 years old they can remove the stuff. It’s fine… Capcom removed trash denuvo from their games too.

But yeah thats stuff to prevent piracy and there was never any/proper anticheat in the game.
The invalid times on the leaderboard was caused by the game and/or legit features no cheats used. Money is mostly useless in the game so no cheat required.

They can simply add some ‘trusted player’ feature to the game with less power than the ‘mod’ feature. If these players report some times/scores from leaderboard remove these entries.
Same in Motorsport if someone (trusty not random streamers) watched rivals replay and says this can’t be done then look into it. And it’s their physics they know how fast the car is in best case or how fast the ai can handle the track… An uncheated ‘AI’ can beat every track faster than normal players so you have max values if someone is doing same or faster look into it.
It’s just math u can tell if someone played with the grip values or other things. They can do this for every corner… It’s a racing game, not many places to cheat (speed, grip, fuel/wear/weather maybe)

1 Like

Then that’s the sort of thing I mean about being done at the server side, not only can you have it so “local” files cannot be modded the same way, you have an automatic “clean” profile at all times, and anything unrealistic can be spotted immediately at server side and the appropriate carried out.

And anyone who does such things gets harshly penalised.

Just needs the will, but if they don’t get this sorted out from the new FM and the next iteration of FH then the same will happen and legit players will go, leaving them with people who paid 12 bucks for a modded account and the whole franchise will fold.

Oh, and “anticheat” is there, if you think that the regular updates only squashes some bugs and adds features you’re missing the bigger picture as there wouldn’t be the need to keep releasing new chat mods after every update. Just because it doesn’t run a “service” like Battleye doesn’ mean there’s nothing there, T10/XGS are constantly squashing cheat mods as well as cracks or the first round of cheat mods would still work. As I say, “local” anticheat systems can be bypassed, and do get bypassed. Doesn’t matter which one you use, it gets broken and some WILL always use them if they can. Only way to put a dent in that is to keep more sandboxed on the server where they can’t getto things so easily.

Means no “offline” play and no limited internet connection, and unlucky if you’re on a slow connection, but completely sandboxing the important bits is the only way to put a dent into the problem, as well as hitting those who try harshly.

Thats normal, the code is (re)compiled so some offsets/pointers/patterns change. Nothing todo with ‘anticheat’ or playground/t10 targeting some tools.

Big question is if they even try todo something. Take rockstar with gta5 as example they have the big money and people and the game is flooded with cheaters/modders since ever. They do “nothing” only if the paid/money stuff is not working/abused.

T10/Playground is not doing more money after release. Maybe some carpack here and there but yeah. The playerbase is small compared to other games they can simply ignore the stuff and move on to next release wich brings new money.

If it directly attacks the cheat mods, then it is a form of anticheat. They don’t tell you that in the release notes, same as they don’t tell you that the automatic antimalware check the game does when you start it, whether you have “on demand scanning” on or off, is looking for specific things.

They try, every version update closes the door on another exploit. Give it two weeks after the update, the cheat mod gets updated. That’s the joys of having the important stuff at “local” level, those with the skills can dig in and find what to exploit so T10 are constantly chasing tails as they have to fix the “new” update every time. Eventually one side will run out of options, like how all I can see for FM7 is “megacredits” now,

Unless you completely sandbox something, which is hard to do with Windows, then nothing at “local” level is secure, someone can and will exploit it when it comes to anticheat. Every one of them has to do the same as T10 do with every update as they get exploited or someone figures out how to “hide” something, and in the end it’s the user who pays the price when the most innocent of programs ends up triggering the block in game by thinking things like GeForce Experience is a cheat mod.

Not sure if they are doing as much as you think cause like the leaderboards for speedtraps and jumps in FH5 haven’t been cleaned for months and months, I take a screenshots once in a while and it’s the same player with the 11km jump still up there in number 1 position, what guarantees are we going to have that leaderboards in FM are regularly kept clean cause I have no doubt someone out there will find the exploits in the 5 days before launch.

They’re doing what I’ve said, “historic” leaderboard are a different matter altogether, and, honestly, they should now be ignored as it’s clear nothing will be done after so many years. Not weeks or months, but years, because they can only GUESS at who has cheated even though speeds and jumps straight out of a Mel Brooks movie are pretty obvious given the last time I looked Mexico had things like gravity and air friction.

Don’t believe me, keep up with the cheat mod scene and you’ll see the version changes, nearly always for Steam versions of FH5. T10 don’t tell you that in the release notes, but it does explain why the game gets bjorked so much after an “update” as something that is innocent, added to Windows own foibles which had a file which did not exist and was never dowloaded end up being flagged because of an entry in the registry regarding a browser cache…

After all, if they weren’t shutting these things down there wouldn’t be a new one after every game update, for that code would still be valid. Oh, and it’s admitted by those doing the naughty that T10 does actively block things with every update.

But don’t the Steam users still have to go through the MS stuff anyway even if they bought off Steam?

I see that they are hacking the monthly rides now as well in H5, what next… being tossed in the air on fire!

Edit, I might have just answered that last part thinking of your last post and the last update for FH5

If updates are now attacking the paying customers so much with 4 hours of work to be done to get a game to run when you legit own it, don’t mod it or use cheats… the future is not looking bright for PC gamers

Again it’s how it works… They have to compile the executable again and the compiler is optimizing things and stuff. The binary is not same then. If they still have the araxan on top then it adds own stuff and obfuscation.

Take a look at some of the cheats (random table from internet)

To add their “Free upgrade costs” they have to inject own code on ForzaHorizon5.exe+3AE37D4 (location of the executable in memory + 0x3AE37D4 bytes) wich is fixed offset and breaks after update but here they search for these “45 8B 64 24 38” bytes in memory. Its unique in this case so it works after updates and injects on correct offset (atm). They then add their “xor r12d, r12d” code wich makes it 0 and now u pay nothing for the upgrade.

ForzaHorizon5.exe+3AE37D1: 4C 8B F0                 - mov r14,rax
// ---------- INJECTING HERE ----------
ForzaHorizon5.exe+3AE37D4: 45 8B 64 24 38           - mov r12d,[r12+38]
// ---------- DONE INJECTING  ----------
ForzaHorizon5.exe+3AE37D9: 49 8B 5D 00              - mov rbx,[r13+00]

This one shows how lazy the stuff is coded…

To make the car free in autoshow they simply change some dbquery string and set costs in database to 0 so every car is now free. (No other checks or whatever)

writeString("ForzaHorizon5.exe+6485A77", "Data_Car SET BaseCost = 0 WHERE BaseCost >0       

But this one has a fixed offset of 0x6485a77 bytes this needs to be changed after forza update or it can overwrite other code and game crashes or whatever but cheat doesn’t work anymore until new offset is in. Its seconds to fix for the “cheater” just simple search in memory. If the cheatcreator adds some stuff he can make it work for all versions but he was lazy too :smiley:

In the end it shows there is no anticheat in the game

No, Steam runs via a different cliet, etc, which is why your progress via Steam cannot be switched to MS Store version, it’s in its own little box, hence the different version of the same PC game.

They’re close, but that client makes the difference.

The modders say that anything they do MIGHT work on MS Store/Game Pass versions, but can’t guarantee it.

1 Like

In the end, there is a piece of the code that is modified to create the exploit. That is then patched to close the hole and earlier exploits disabled.

By definition, that is an “anticheat” because the system is set up to recognise certain things and block access to the game if it finds something hinky, and it’s a constant reactive battle to try and stay ahead of those doing the naughty. Just because it doesn’t say “Easy Anticheat” or “Battleye” or whatever does not mean that there is nothing that does that job.

Like with the much mooted “anticheat” systems, which are bypassed with alarming regularity and face the same constant tail chasing as T10, it’s a constant battle in which T10 use their own methods over a third party software which can also fail in its primary job, and does do.

Random tables from the internet are irrelevant, as this is a SPECIFIC set of instructions that do various things, such as those in FM7 which disabled online play if you dared to have a VPN programme installed, never mind in use, which I found out the hard way and had to use browser addons instead. You have no idea if they are genuine or not, for just because it appears on the internet does not mean it is true. Just one look at the main page of any “newspaper” should tell you that.

It’s a moot point anyway, as NOT knowing what they use means the attack vector is less obvious. What we do know is that they do close down things. You have ANY modding programme on your PC, whether you use it on FH5 or not, the DRM/malware check detects it and it won’t take you long to find people who have been banned even though they claim they did nothing but have the likes of WeMod present. That is an “anticheat” system, it detects and then acts accordingly.

And you don’t even have to go back a month to find people complaining of being warned and banned for that.